Most famous (non fictional) fighting vessel of all time

I'd go for the USS Monitor.

While not the first ironclad warship - it was among the first to be purpose built as an ironclad rather than retrofitted - and it was the first ever to fire a shot in anger - as such it marked a new era in naval warfare and naval ship design that lasted for around 200 years

 

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Starshi--- oh wait ok

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My vote for the most famous non-fictional fighting vessel of all time was Queen Anne's revenge.




The Yamato and Midway were well known within the last 60 years, but queen Anne's Revenge has been famous for the past 300 years.

Ships baring the name "The revenge" have been around since the 1500s.......but there's there's 13 different ships with the same name. Individual fame is greater than saturation stretched across multiple models
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Revenge

 

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Ref: Posts 57 &58: It turns out that sub fired torpedo(s?) did sink a battleship:

"... The Danton was a battleship of the French Navy and the lead ship of her class of pre-dreadnought battleships. She was a technological leap in battleship development for the French Navy: she was the first ship in the fleet with turbine engines.[1] ... served in World War I as an escort for supply ships and troop transports, guarding them from elements of the Austro-Hungarian Navy. She was also assigned to help keep the Yavuz Sultan Selim, a nominally Turkish but de facto German battlecruiser, out of the Mediterranean Sea.

While en route to aid a blockade 19 March 1917 she was torpedoed and sunk by a German U-boat, leaving 296 men dead. The location of the wreck remained a mystery until an underwater survey team inadvertently discovered the battleship in December 2007. In February 2009, the wreck was confirmed to be Danton.[2] The ship is in remarkably good shape for her age. Danton rests upright on the ocean floor, and most of the original equipment is reported to be intact. ..."

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_battleship_Danton_(1909)

There is a computer generated photo (processed sound waves I think) of her in today's Folio de Sao Paulo sitting on the Med sea floor. - that is why I learned of her. She had four two barrel gun turrets but the front port side one is missing now. The Wiki link has a regular photo of ship said to be her, but I have my doubts as there appears to be only one larger main gun in front. (Assuming the just firmly identified ship on the Med floor is the Danton.) The acoustic processed "photo" (if that is what it is) has good resolution - each of the gun barrels is very distinct. This photo comes with credit to: Galsi Company & /Associated Press. Perhaps someone will find copy and post it here.

Certainly the Danton is not a contender for most famous warship - but its history does prove a sub sank a battleship. While not a modern size battleship, that was her classification and here are her specs:

Displacement: 18,318 metric tons (18,029 long tons) standard, 19,763 metric tons (19,451 long tons) full load
Length: 144.9 m (475 ft 5 in)
Beam: 25.8 m (84 ft 8 in)
Draught: 9.2 m (30 ft 2 in)
Propulsion: 4 shaft Parsons turbines, 26 Bellville or Niclausse coal fired boilers, 22,500 horsepower (16.8 MW)
Speed: 19.2 knots (35.6 km/h; 22.1 mph)
Complement: up to 923

Armament: 4 × 305mm/45 Modèle 1906 guns in twin mounts
12 × 240mm/50 Modèle 1902 guns in twin mounts
16 × 75mm/65 Modèle 1906 guns in single mounts
10 × 47 mm guns (single)
2 × 450 mm Torpedo tubes (M12D)

Armour: 270 mm (11 in) Belt
48 mm (2 in) upper deck
45 mm (2 in) lower deck
300 mm (12 in) main turrets
200 mm (8 in) secondary turrets

 

That's pretty small by "modern" battleship standards. The Iowa class in WWII was 45k tons, and the Yamato was 65k tons. I'm not sure how fair it is to compare them.

 

agreed. If a 20K ton warship were introduced now it would not be likely to be called a "battleship."

 

The russian Kirov class is 24k tons and it's referred to as either a "heavy cruiser" or "battlecruiser" depending on your source; the russians officially classified it as a "heavy cruiser." The american Alaska class is 29 tons, and it was designated as a "large cruiser". Of course it's a continuum of ship sizes, so exactly where you draw the line between a cruiser and a battleship is fairly arbitrary.

 

I would say the Yamato.

Because they raised it and flew it into space to fight the Gammalons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Blazers

 

And obviously moved upwards in tons since WWI.

 

i guess i must cede the statement that carriers are defenseless.
i completely forgot about midway, a carrier battle.

 

This is a little off topic, but I have always been a fan of the fast frigates (formerly destroyers)

http://ussbadger-1071.org/gallery/displayimage.php?album=1&pos=0

 

Well for one thing the US ships if even being hinted at the fact that there is a submarine would stop, perform acoustic searches, and use active and passive sonars, anything above 200 meters or so would be found and than the US sub would stop and drop it sonar line below 200 meters and find anything below that. And considering the fact that most Russian submarines were made to be diesel-fuel cell submarines, they dont have very long to sink the American carrier.

Also, wake homing torpedos, do not as submariners call it "break the back of a ship" (the process of blowing up a torpedo under the ship. They merely hit the back of the ship and carry a relatively poor payload compared to the 65cm torpedo.

Also the problem is that there are alf a dozen, probably more ships surrounding the carrier. The wake homing torpedo does not identify between the wake of an oliver hazzard perry class, and a nimitz carrier, it merely goes after the closest wake. And usually that would be an escort ship.

And in the worst case scenario, American ships were armed with nuclear depth charges strapped to a SUBROC.

Battleships, especially the larger ones like the Iowa had at their thickest place, 12 inches of solid steel armor, very little could penetrate that.

Torpedos are dangerous because unlike bombs they explode underwater, a bomb shell that causes a hole is only a problem for ten minutes, than you can repair it. You cant repair a hole in a room that is flooded with water and with the water level raising higher.

IT may take longer to sink a ship with a torpedo, but it will happen.

Now the American ADCAP torpedos are neigh invincible, they are packed with sensors, computers, and proximity fuses, so very often, they will swim parallel to a ship if fired from behind, withing a few hundred feet, the torpedo will make a hard 90 degree turn straight under the ship and than detonate a massive payload creating an airbubble that would first rais the ship up a few feet and than collapse it straight down cracking it in half, "breaking its back"

 

correct me if i am wrong, but it was the US that made a supersonic bomber the valkyrie which evolved into the B1, not the Russians.

I have heard of pretty much all of the major soviet bombers for the cold war and none of them approach the speed of sound, except for one, and the reason why we are given the impression there were so many was that during a parad in Moscow, hundreds flew overhead in the space of the day long ceremony, in reality they only had like 20 planes...their entire fleet, just circling a lot of times over moscow.

 

That would be true if they do not switch to acoustic (and / or magnetic) terminal guidance. Most big modern, post WWII wake homers do.

There is no public data on the big fast USSR wake homer I was referring to but it is better than the WWII 65cm torpedo (65-76 Kit, which I think is Russian for whale.) which had nearly a half ton of HE as the warhead. (If not the nuclear version). This WWII one can be fired from more than 5 miles behind* the target ship and travel at 50 knots (faster some think). More on the 65-76 at: http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WTRussian_post-WWII.htm
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*Range is said to be 50km (31 miles) but it must catch the ship. Also it will usually need to run a mile or two towards the the wake, cross wake, and turn back into the wake to start the chase. (Firing sub has seen the battle group pass and tells it which way to turn.) Once inside the wake, that does give it some acustic cover, but I do not know if that is very significant - I bet it is not.

Again, I do not think one could ever get near the carrier as it would be heard as soon as launched & running by the escorting subs of the carrier and destroyed by one (or more, if need be) of its torpedoes.

 

The main super-sonic bomber used by the russian navy for ant-ship purposes was the Tu-22, which they built over 300 of. It could carry up to ten large, long range anti-ship missiles in a rapid-launch rotating internal bay.

There was also the Tu-160, arguably the most advanced super-sonic bomber ever built, which so far as I know was always just a part of the russian airforce (rather than the navy). It could carry up to 12 large anti-ship missiles in internal bays.

 

huh, well maybe i was just thinking of some other program that they had which they cancelled.

 

umm yah, kk.

 

There definitely was one that they spent a lot of time and money developing and then only ever built a few of, I don't remember what it was called or why they never built many though.

 

it sounds to me that the one you were referancing before may have been another attempt to make another one since apparently the preceding one didnt work out so well.

But still, a supersonic bomber would not help them that much because intercepting fighters already travel at that speed, and anti ship missiles can be shot down.

 

I do not know if this is what you are thinking of, but believe they built a huge prototype of a troop transport "invasion airplane" (bigger than Howard Hugh's "spruce goose"). It could not fly with outground effect help. (I think that may have been true of the spruce goose also as in all films of it flying I have seen, it was at very low altitude.) That was of no concern as they would want to keep it low to avoid radars. I think it was to attack NATO forces in Eastern Europe from the rear. (Fly low over the Baltic and then turn south. Perhaps satellite recon killed the program?)